Hit-Run Suspect Charged With Felonies

Julio Acevedo, left, who is accused of leaving the scene of an accident that killed a young couple and their son, was brought to Brooklyn on Thursday.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

The suspect in a hit and run that killed a young pregnant woman, her husband and, later, their newborn son was returned to New York on Thursday and charged with three felony counts of criminally negligent homicide.

The suspect, Julio Acevedo, waived extradition at a brief Thursday morning hearing in Pennsylvania before a Lehigh County judge, and was later handed over to the New York police for the long drive to the 78th Precinct station house in Brooklyn.

At his arraignment in Criminal Court in Brooklyn late Thursday night, Mr. Acevedo was charged with criminally negligent homicide, as well as leaving the scene, excessive speed, assault and reckless driving, and the judge ordered him held without bail. The severity of the crash had led to calls — from many in the Orthodox Jewish community, to which the couple belonged, and beyond — for the police and prosecutors to aggressively pursue the driver of the BMW.

Gayle Damf, a Brooklyn assistant district attorney, said that based on Mr. Acevedo’s criminal record, he could face anywhere from 15 years to life imprisonment if convicted.

Ms. Damf said that on the night of the crash, two witnesses saw Mr. Acevedo’s vehicle speed around a fire truck. After the crash, she said, “They approached him. They asked if he was O.K.” She continued: “He said he was fine.” The witnesses then approached the vehicle of the couple, Raizy and Nathan Glauber. When the witnesses turned around, “he was gone,” Ms. Damf said. The same witnesses later identified Mr. Acevedo in a police lineup.

A lawyer for Mr. Acevedo, Kathleen Julian, said that the crash “was an accident, a horrible accident.” She added: “The facts are going to show it was an accident.”

The police had arrested Mr. Acevedo on felony charges of leaving the scene, and earlier Thursday night, added an additional charge of first-degree vehicular manslaughter for the death of the boy, who was delivered prematurely immediately after the accident and died a day later. Prosecutors did not file that charge.

New York courts have examined the issue of an emergency delivery after an accident: in 2002, a Brooklyn court found a drunken driver who hit a pregnant woman could be charged with manslaughter in the death of her 8-month-old fetus that was delivered after the crash and died shortly after.

A charge of manslaughter, prosecutors with experience in this area said, generally requires the driver to have criminal intent or be intoxicated, as was the case in 2002.

“The law is, if the baby is born prematurely and the only reason the baby is born is from his actions, and then dies, he caused the death of that child,” said Arthur L. Aidala, a criminal defense lawyer and former assistant Brooklyn district attorney. “All it takes is a breath” from the baby for it to be considered a live birth.

Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the office of the chief medical examiner, said late Thursday that the couple’s child died of “extreme prematurity” because of “blunt force injuries” sustained by Ms. Glauber during the accident.

Also on Thursday, the other driver in the crash spoke publicly for the first time at a news conference arranged by a taxi drivers’ trade association.

The crash occurred just after midnight on Sunday on Kent Avenue as Mr. Delacruz turned from Wilson Street, which has a stop sign at the intersection.

“I know the area,” Mr. Delacruz said. “I’ve worked in this area for 10 years. I do this five days a week. Of course I’m going to stop at a stop sign.”

The police have said Mr. Acevedo, who did not have a stop sign or light, had been driving a borrowed BMW at “more than 60 miles per hour” when it slammed into the driver’s side of the cab, owned by Mr. Delacruz.

Mr. Delacruz, a 32-year-old father of three whose wife is pregnant, said that the death of the family had devastated him. “I’m not good,” he said in Spanish.

“There is nothing that he did wrong,” Fernando Mateo, the founder of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said in a telephone call after the news conference. Mr. Mateo said Mr. Delacruz was in the process of formally transferring his car’s paperwork to a new company, Brooklyn Car Service. On the day of the crash, that paperwork had yet to be processed, meaning the car should not have been sent to pick up passengers, the Taxi and Limousine Commission said.

Logs from Brooklyn Car Service list several pickups by Mr. Delacruz for the company that night, but none after 11:04 p.m.

Mr. Delacruz said he did not pick the Glaubers up on the street, but he did not say what company sent him.

Mr. Acevedo, 44, who is unemployed and had a pending court date at the time of the crash on a drunken-driving arrest, told the judge at his extradition hearing in Pennsylvania that he lived with his mother in Brooklyn. He said his last job was maintaining vehicles for a bus company.

Scott Brettschneider, a lawyer retained by Mr. Acevedo on Wednesday, said it was up to the prosecution to provide evidence of criminal behavior behind the wheel if they sought to bring stiffer charges than leaving the scene of an accident causing injuries (or, in this case, deaths), a felony. “Other than a horrible accident, there has to be more than that,” he said in a telephone interview before the arraignment.

Mr. Brettschneider said he had previously given legal advice to Mr. Acevedo during his time in prison. Mr. Acevedo, who has struggled with alcohol, has a history of serious crime and served more than eight years in prison for a 1987 killing.

“I think we have to see what the prosecution has,” Mr. Brettschneider said. “They have to prove everything.”

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on March 8, 2013, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Hit-Run Suspect Charged With Felonies. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe